Cruel Seas - Lost convoy

After having first starter of Cruel Seas game from Warlord games I was sold to this game. At first, those wonderful little ships drew my attention and were "must have" things. And after reading the rules and trying a game I was even more convinced. This was something else than "traditional" naval war game, where lines of battleships steam apart and exchange heavy gunfire, until one retreats. This was something I call "naval skirmish", a fistfight of small and fast ships at pretty close range. Action is fast and things happen, it's great fun. And by the way, those models are lovely, if I didn't mention that before.

This week we gathered again for a game at our club, and decided to have convoy attack game. We selected rule book scenario 5 "Destroy the convoy" as a base concept for our game. Then we just tweaked the game by selecting the ships we had available at the moment, and decide to play on larger board. Lastly we added one larger warship for both sides, a Flower and M class sweeper, just to get more nice models on the table. Normally we didn't bother much of calculating points, we just approximate the forces. That's because the drama and story is so much more fun, though it might be bit unbalanced sometimes. But still I have to state that Germans had bit stronger force, but they were the attacker, so that fits.

British navy was a freighter and two tankers, escorted by three Vospers and one Fairmile D MGB. One flower corvette was to join the battle later after being called for help. Germans attacked with four S-boots backed by R-boot. And there was also a minesweeper lurking around to join the fray at some stage.

Convoy started moving across the table from one end using slow speed, screened by the escorts. And at the same time the grey hunters appeared on horizon. The convoy was alerted and all ships put more speed to their propellers. The alerted Vospers prepared for a fight and Fairmile raised the speed up too.

After appearing on the scene German s-boots turned right and were clearly moving to better position for torpedo attack. Four fast and strong grey boat monsters were truly quite formidable opponent.

The Vospers fanned out to meet the Germans and ordered full speed for all boats. The aim was to raech and hit s-boots even before torpedoes were launched. S-boots lifted the speed too and fast they were. Convoy commander had spotted lone German R boot in front of the convoy on their course and Fairmile D was sent to deal the matching opponent.

After initial and not very accurate auto cannon shots from Vospers S-boots had used their stunning speed and moved on the port side of the convoy and turned for a torpedo launch. Germans also returned fire but the speed and size of Vospers gave very good protection for them. Germans were ready launch the torpedoes. As Vospers and S-boots passed by exchanging fire Germans launched first salvo of torpedoes.

The eals were on the water and moving swiftly to the convoy. The convoy was steaming full speed ahead and was just hoping for the best. Then the port side tanker took different decision and turned to face approaching S-boots and torpedoes. Maybe trying to give smaller target and pass between the approaching torpedoes. But now it had to face all those automatic cannons.

When MTB's passed S-boots one Vospers struck home with it's 20 mm cannon and the S-boot lost it's front gun and grew was badly shaken. This gave approaching poor tanker time, since Germans were not able to fire at all for a moment. But there was still other grey hunters to be faced.

Other ships of the convoy were watching helplessly approaching torpedoes and tried squeeze even more steam form boilers.

At the same time Fairmile and R-boot exchanged fire but both missed most of the shots and it seemed that R-boot was also more interested of the convoy than approaching and very strongly armed Fairmile.

Second wave of S-boots prepared for their torpedo launch.

Then the inevitable happened and torpedoes struck freighter port side the first torpedo nearly sunk the ship and then second one did the job. Freighters engines stopped and the ship became floating derelict for two turns.

This sinking time is a house rule we adopted when we felt, that shipwreck is cool to have on table for a while and then took off. So we decided that after dropping to zero hull points, ship will float D3 turns and then is removed from the board. This gives also a nice change to use those cool little lifeboat models I've done just for this purpose.

At this stage bigger ships entered the fight for both sides. German M -class minesweepers steamed on and immediately engaged Fairmile. But M-class missed heavy gun shots and MGB was saved for a moment. With it's multiple guns minesweepers sprayed fire also on Vospers hitting one badly.

And what's even more worrying, one tanker was steaming right towards the big German ship.

The Flower class corvette joined also the scene from other side of the table and opened fire on S-boots getting some good hits on nearest one. And then the course of the corvette took it straight on collision course with one S-boots which wasn't able to evade.

This collision caused some damage on Corvette bow, but the hit sunk the poor s-boot.

Then the Germans got their revenge when the other s-boot passed by the corvette and raked it with auto cannon fire causing great deal of damage and hitting the corvette three times critically. Badly damaged corvette lost it's bridge, ammunition exploded and one gun was lost. There was quite chaotic situation on the ship.

During this fight of warships one more tanker was sunk by the gunfire of multiple Germans ships and all but on Vospers were lost too.

Then the last tanker was trying to get away from this mayhem but was also struck heavily by the gunfire from minesweeper and R-boot. This was too much and last tanker sunk.

After realizing the defeat British escorts withdraw to save at least some ships and respect they had. Even though Royal Navy put up a brave fight Germans were too powerful and attacked with good tactics and the gun fire of Germans was amazingly accurate, many good hits and plenty of critical  hits. Vospers proved to be bit of outgunned in this fight. So there was many life boats to be saved after the fight was over.




Once again a very good game of Cruel Seas. Action packed and very dramatic, in some sense cinematic in some phases. The Germans won but it was no walk in the park for them. The Royal navy fought bravely till the end.